Elizabeth Bear’s Sci-Fi

Last summer, Hammered by Elizabeth Bear was recommended to me by a friend.  It couldn’t have come at a better time; I had just forced my way through a terrible book and was in desperate need of something better.  Luckily,  Hammered didn’t let me down at all!  Right from the get go I couldn’t put the book down, being enchanted with Jenny Casey, the hero of the trilogy, as well as the quirky future world in which the books take place.

Hammered tells the story of Jenny Casey, formerly Master Warrant Officer of the Canadian Army.  Casey lost her legs and left hand in service, but was the only one to successfully adapt to her metal limbs.  But 35 years later, those metal limbs are slowly killing her.  I was so enchanted with Hammered that I immediately put the other two books on hold and finished the entire trilogy before I could even look at another book.

Luckily I didn’t have to wait too long for Scardown and Worldwired, which continued the Jenny Casey saga.  By about half way through Scardown, it became obvious that a lot more was at stake than Jenny Casey’s life.  By the time Worldwired starts, the book doesn’t follow Jenny Casey as much; it’s so entangled in everything else in the aftermath of disaster.  But overall, I really enjoyed the entire trilogy.

So now, almost a year later, I decided to go back to Elizabeth Bear’s books.  Another friend recommended Dust to me, saying it was a fantastic read.  I started it yesterday, and I’m already a third of the way through it.  Dust is set in a different world from the Jenny Casey trilogy.  It follows the story of two sisters, Perceval, the angelic prisoner who had her wings cut off, and Rien, the girl who was raised to believe she was a servant.  After a fateful meeting, Rien decides to help Perceval escape, throwing her lot in with the angel who claims to be her sister.  Together, they are on a quest to find their father to stop a war from tearing the world apart.  Once again, I find myself enchanted by Bear’s story and characters.  And once again, I find myself not wanting to put the book down.